What are E-Sports?

          E-sports is a boogie-word thats being slanderously thrown around by news stations on slow days. A spectacle by and for children they say. Its a word synonymous with the death of american values and a swan song for the muscular jocks once sent west to stake their claim. Gone are the days of a father and son throwing the old pigball around and drinking beer made from fermented hotdogs. See you later pops, I'm off to play with my digi-dad.

E-sports made 700 million dollars in 2017.
Its deadly serious.

Light History
          In 1980 Atari held an event for their game Space Invaders and 10 thousand people showed up. The next year Twin Galaxies started touring the country to visit arcades and collate high scores. As time marched on we moved to multiplayer games like DOOM and Quake. In 1997 a Quake event called Red Annihilation was one of the first nationwide tournaments, attracting around 1,900 applicants. It was held in Atlanta at the World Congress Center (the then home of E3) with a prize of a 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS. Now E-sports has expanded and drew in 385 million viewers in 2017. Thats a lot of eyes to sell Coca-Cola and network providers to and with sponsors come a lot of money.
          ESPN and other networks have disparaged E-Sports and its demographic in the past but now we're seeing a reversal. ESPN which has been hemorrhaging viewers since 2011 started their own official coverage in 2016. A little late to the show, instead the big bucks are being raked in by championship organizers like Battle.net and Major League Gaming

Are they Sports?
          This is actually two separate arguments. Are video games a sport and are video gamers athletes. The US government agrees with the latter and in 2013 recognized them as professional athletes. This means visas for foreign players and unique tax opportunities for organizers. If its a question of practice then cyber athletes train, at times, 12 hours a day for the entire season. If its a question of physical effort then we can compare it to the air rifle events at the olympics or the spelling bees ESPN aired long before they let E-Sports onto the scene. The players are professional, disciplined, and focused. Put it all together and what do you got? Athletes!
          Now for the sports side. Of course its a sport. The issue right now is nobody has a definition of sport that makes everybody happy. Chess is a sport. It exists physically and requires exertion to play, just as a a computer mouse and keyboard might. The International Olympic Committee declared it a sport in 1999 - its just that at the time not enough people wanted to watch it. Many classify it as a competition - which is a term that encompasses sports like rectangles encompass squares. For now its safe to call E-Sports E-Sports, a word that just happens to contain the word sport. Like transport or passport, E-Sports will remain the official term regardless

At 2:30 in this video you can watch as one player (on the right but his health is at the top left) one hit away from defeat perfectly block a dozen attacks and win the game. It has everything you want from an iconic sports moment - complete with cheering fans blocking the view.

Are they better than Sports?
          There are several distinct advantages E-Sports have over Physical Sports. Most fans have actually played the game and the community around it is deeply invested. Because of this official teams have a huge pool of stringently ranked players to choose from and anyone can get picked just from playing the game well as a hobby. For League of Legends that is 27 million people to look at every day. Thats a lot of data and lets the best rise to the top in a way traditional scouting has failed to do. In this digital medium teams are new and not tied to location, often viewers owe allegiances to specific players instead of teams. Trade a player and you're also trading away all of their fans.
          Online streaming has become a main revenue source for players and personalities through platforms like Twitch. Twitch is an online streaming service that allows users to create media personas broadcasting live. It has proven a good fit for people playing video games commedically and seriously alike. Some streamers put out nine hours of content each day - showing off their games and techniques to thousands of fans at a time. Imaqtpie, a League of Legends player, brings in around 14 thousand dollars a month through subscribers and sponsors. E-Athletes often do this in the off season and pre-post their official careers. Imagine being able to go online at any time to watch Cristiano Ronald or Tom Brady practicing live every day. Fantasy football would lose its mind.

Specifics
          Most official E-Sports these days are shooting games. These range from free for all scavenge and skirmish across large maps (PlayerUnkown Battlegrounds), to team based bomb defusal (Counter Strike: Global Offensive), teams firing continuously until the enemy is dead (Halo, Call of Duty), to teams blasting paint to cover as much of the map as they can (Splatoon.)
          Another popular genre is MOBAs. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas. Generally, top down teams of various characters move across a map, securing checkpoints, fighting enemies, and leveling up until they can destroy the other team's base (League of Legends, DOTA 2.)
Lastly we have Real Time Strategy games (RTS) like Starcraft. One versus one contests collecting resources and building up your army faster than the enemy side can.
           I'm not saying Minecraft can't be an E-Sport. I'm saying right now to just consider games with definable metrics of success, i.e. competition, and a fanbase willing to pay money for it. Just as Hoop and Stick isn't a sport - Minesweeper isn't an E-Sport.